EVE radio breakout board for the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is an excellent tool to build the ‘Internet of things’ we’ve been hearing about, but there’s still the issue of connecting the Raspi to other devices. The EVE Alpha – a breakout board for several wireless radio modules for the Raspberry Pi – hopes to change that with their Kickstarter campaign.

The idea behind the EVE is to provide a link between low-power radio modules found in a few of the microcontroller projects we’ve seen and the Raspberry Pi. It does this by simply serving as a breakout board, taking the GPIO pins on the Raspi and connecting them to solder pads for a few of the many radio modules currently available.

Already the EVE supports the RFM12B wireless tranciever, a Z-Wave module, 868-915Mhz SRF modules, and has a breakout for an XBee module, allowing the EVE to communicate using one of the many different XBee boards. There’s also a battery-backed real-time clock and temperature sensor thrown in for good measure making this board the perfect building block for an outdoor weather station or solar array.

It’s an awesome idea, and if you already have a few radio modules, incredibly cheap; just the PCB is only £6, and a board with all the SMD components is only £20.

Oh I didn’t mean to accuse, it’s a cool idea, I know the guys who did this (met them at various Maker faires in the UK and the EMF hack camp) I just thought the policy was “no kickstarter projects” full stop, and wondered if that changed.

Don’t apologize to someone who thinks they have the last word on what’s cool! Jesus Christ! What is this, The Verge? Do authoritative statements come with the territory of an internet-magazine style layout? Why don’t we all grow patchy beards and start wearing tight jeans and lame t-shirts?

Cool station though, Warning for others: it just started randomly pumping beats out when I went to the site — cool beats — but still — if you’re at work or something: grab some headphones before clicking.

Agreed, it’s my favorite “best bang for the buck” radio right now. Other concerns:

1) Some radios have tight timing constraints and small buffers. Will a Pi running the user’s choice of Linux, without specific real-time extensions, and possibly running other apps as well, be able to successfully meet these constraints?

2) Impossible to say whether some of the possible combinations of radios in such close proximity to each other might have unintended consequences. One radio while transmitting may swamp another’s LNA, or cause AGC reduction that it takes a while to recover from, leading to lost received packets.

3) With places for radios on both sides of the board, and the board itself mostly ground plane, I’m also concerned about uneven radiation/reception patterns for each radio.

I’d prefer smaller, cheaper, individual boards for each radio; each containing a cheap MCU with USB. Then the real-time response of the Pi isn’t so critical. Additional buffering can be provided by the MCU when beneficial. Each radio can be spaced out and oriented optimally. And, it would no longer *require* a Pi, you could use a Pi or any other Linux box.

Yeah, I expect CCP will have a ~word~ with this company if it takes off. CCP almost certainly has a trademark or whatever they call it in england, seeing as that’s where the EVE (game) cluster has been located since forever. Not exactly a minor presence.

Their logo is also similar enough to EVE (game)’s logo that I imagine it would cause issues.

Theres an online game called EvE, and a online service called eve-radio. Wouldnt this cause confusion for some? it did for me, I though they were somehow affiliated with each other, but this has nothing to do with the REAL eve-radio.